The century cook book

If the buck be fat, the saddle should be cooked without being larded, and without removing the fat from the filets, as this fat is generally much esteemed; but if the filets are not covered with a thick coat of fat, the skin is removed, and the flesh larded with bacon. In such conditions the saddle may either be roasted on the spit, or baked in the oven. It must be basted with butter whilst cooking. A saddle of venison may be served with a piquant sauce, with poivrade or venison sauce, with gravy, or currant jelly; but it is often served with gravy in the dish, and some venison sauce can be served separately. When a saddle of venison is served carved, the filets should first be removed, then cut slanting, put back into their places, and glazed with a paste-brush. A Nice Large Noix of Veal is not one of the least estimable dishes, nor one of the least choice, if the meat is nice, fat, white, and delicate, cooked to the exact point, and well glazed. In England some salt meat is generally served with removes of veal. The noix represented in the plate is select, voluminous, and with all the tétine adhering to it. The meat is larded with bacon, the piece secured in an oval shape, with a string, cooked with little liquid, and nicely glazed; it is dished up on a foundation of cooked meat, cooled under a press, and glazed at the entrance of the oven; this foundation is necessary, to heighten the form and aspect of the piece. It is surrounded with groups of vegetables, cooked in water, or glazed; cauliflowers, carrots, green peas, French beans. Two skewers of vegetables are inserted in the meat on each side. The bottom of the dish is masked with good gravy, the dish itself placed on a hot-water dish. With this remove is served a brown sauce, slightly thickened, and worked with the residue, freed of the fat, of the noix of veal. 214 Artistic Cookery A Fine Sirloin of Beef, the produce of a young animal carefully fattened and just sufficiently developed, is a most captivating picture for a connoisseur; but the joint must have hung sufficiently long to have acquired the wished-for tenderness; and it is of the highest importance that it should be roasted on the spit, and attended to with the utmost care. Beef, even when taken from a young animal, is always tough, dry, and without aroma, if it has not hung the proper time. The most perfect beef may become dry and tasteless, by not observing the proper medium between its being too much over, or underdone. The sirloin represented in the plate, is served on the filet mignon — optical exigencies alone have induced me to present it thus — but I have no intention of giving it as a rule. Every practitioner knows, that in England sirloins of beef intended for great dinners, are always served with the large filet underneath.